


this place is a shelter

by Joana789



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, Future, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, Post-Canon, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 16:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12988152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joana789/pseuds/Joana789
Summary: ”Well,” Andrew says, and the answer feels raw on his tongue. ”Someone has to make sure you don’t run again.”





	this place is a shelter

**Author's Note:**

> andrew is an asshole to write but then again, i love a challenge. hope it turned out ok.

 

Future has never meant much to Andrew.

The awareness of it comes and goes, mostly. A useless concept. Future is an overused phrase on TV and on the radio, a battered word, a worn out set of sounds. As if plans were important, and arrangements, and deals, as if they were worth the all-around hunt in the first place. And even if Andrew did get swept up in it too, briefly, it was a mistake he is now aware of. A future is not meant for people like him, not exactly. It is for everyone else.

Anyone else.

He learns to put deals and arrangements in its place, instead. As a way of protection for others more than for himself, a safety seal, a guarantee of a promise, everything a future is not. Andrew learns how to use his knifes effectively, if need be, and how to make people back away with a single glance, how to make them not want to come near at all. It is a seamless transition, he likes to think — from a boy with too high hopes to a person with no desires at all.

And then, Neil Josten happens.

He is like a thunderstorm — Andrew notices the first, second, third drop of rain on his skin, and then it turns into a downpour. A flood. Neil makes him feel too many things at once, things he thought he’d buried in a dark and ancient place never to touch again, and yet, there they are, and there he is. Neil is a terminal illness that settles in and festers, he is a heart failure that happens again and again, he is every disastrous thing that exists all at once.

He is none of those things, too.

Waking up to him is easier than most things in Andrew’s life have ever been. Falling asleep as well. Neil’s presence makes the sharpest of Andrew’s edges soften a bit, makes the tension seep away, and the lack of control is both unnerving and unexpected. Andrew watches him like he watches anyone else, and sees — catalogs the way Neil stretches in the mornings before he gets up, the way his eyes shine after a game, how the world seems to just ease in when he’s around.

Andrew was never looking for an answer.

It came to him anyway.

  
———

  
Neil assembles his body around Andrew’s under the covers, an inch of space between them, molds himself accordingly. Close enough to feel the heat. Far enough not to set any violent reactions into motion, because they both know they still happen sometimes. It’s like an art project — precarious lines, careful arches, wary changes. A construction. That’s what they are, here in the dark.

Andrew can’t see much, but he tries to, anyway. The wall against his back is cold, solid; Neil, in front of him, is warm and relaxed. His hair creates a stark contrast against the pillow; ink black in the nearly nonexistent light where it should be auburn. His left hand rests between them, outstretched like an invitation. Andrew looks at it until he can almost make out all the scars he knows by heart.

 _I want to live with you_ , Neil told him on the roof, earlier, with a twist to his mouth and sunlight on his skin. _After. What do you say?_

They haven’t really talked about it before.

Andrew would be lying if he said he ever thought of it. That’s what years of suppressing the unnecessary reactions did to him, he guesses — at one point, some of the reflexes just stopped altogether. Weakened enough for him to brush them off as nothing. Future is a stupid place to let his mind wander into, so Andrew doesn’t let it happen. Not when everything he is comes down to tamped down knee-jerk reactions, pieces of the few poorly sewn-together personality traits that somehow no one managed to take away from him. He’s aware of this.

But Andrew would be lying if he said he never thought about it as well.

The thing about Neil is this — when he’s around, Andrew doesn’t need to imagine what _could_ be, in some distant place in a hypothetical time. The images are already there, uninvited but persistent anyway. Andrew can make out the shape of it all even if he doesn’t want to, and it’s daunting. The familiarity he never asked for slides over his skin and creeps into his bones, makes them a little less heavy than what Andrew’s used to. It’s an addictive sensation. Destructive and violent like a car crash.

It’s there when Neil’s making coffee in the mornings and when he steals Andrew’s cigarettes after practice and when looking at Andrew is the last thing he does before he falls asleep and the first after he wakes up, when he watches like he’s afraid that Andrew will vanish between one breath and the next.

Andrew can understand that.

He looks at Neil until his eyelids start to feel heavy, listens to his breathing until the sound turns into a low buzz in the back of his mind. Wonders why a boy who never had anything as much as resembling home now suddenly wants to build one. Why the hell he wants to drag Andrew into it.

  
———

  
Neil takes his own unanswered question, folds it carefully in half and puts away in what seems like the most private corner of his mind, because he doesn’t mention it again for a while. Days that turn into weeks that turn into months.

Andrew wants to take it from him and smooth it back out, but doesn’t. He has an answer now, he thinks, through the hazy unsettlement of uncertainty. Faint disturbance on the outskirts of his mind. But it can wait.

When it comes again, it is a low hum muttered into Andrew’s neck, searing hot touch pressed into his skin, Neil’s fingers splayed against Andrew’s ribs, warmth seeping in through the clothing layers. The question’s not as bold as it was before, Andrew thinks as he tightens his fingers in Neil’s hair and swallows down a feeling dangerously similar to relief, unforeseen and unusual. The syllables of it are cramped together this time, like Neil is hesitating. He bites his lip like he didn’t mean for the words to slip at all. His face is like a puzzle with one piece missing.

”Well,” Andrew says, and the answer feels raw on his tongue. ”Someone has to make sure you don’t run again.”

There is a beat of silence, and then Neil huffs out a breath, of surprise and something else. A smile spills over his features, twists them into something lighter. Andrew wants to tell him to stop. Wants to bottle the moment up and hide it away.

”It’s a yes, then,” Neil says, low.

”It is not a no,” Andrew tells him. It feels tender and vulnerable like a bruise.

The absence of objection is not consent. Neil knows this. He moves away an inch Andrew immediately wants to claim back, looks at him for a long second until Andrew spits out a _yes, idiot_. It tastes like affinity.

Neil presses the shape of his smile into the skin of Andrew’s neck, then, wide and private, and Andrew lets him. He moves his hands down Neil’s neck, past his shoulders, to his chest. The heartbeat he feels under his palms is almost as rapid as his own.

”I think we’re going to be horrible at this,” the boy who’s never had a home tells him, sweet-eyed where he used to be hollow. The words sound idiotically happy, like he’s already excited about the failure they are yet to cause.

”You are horrible at everything you do anyway,” Andrew reminds him, then kisses away whatever stupid response Neil might think of.

  
———

  
Words like _home_ or _trust_ or _safety_ are meaningless to him. Andrew takes his knifes everywhere he goes for a reason, leaves the past behind but doesn’t forget the lessons it taught him. Reluctant survival is engraved into his skin. Home was never a real concept. Future was never an idea meant for him.

And yet, one day Andrew opens his eyes and there it is.

He is twenty-four years old. It is more than he ever expected to be, once, in some twisted, ugly way that used to be the default and now seems grey and stained. He is twenty-four, with his own in-and-out apartment, another key in his pocket, lease he needs to pay. He sleeps with his back to the wall and smokes cigarettes on the windowsill in the living room. Makes space for someone else to fit in beside, in his bed and his closet and his mind. Gives him the second key.

”Another one to add to your unhealthy collection,” he says as Neil carefully curls his fingers around the piece of metal as if it was anything more than exactly that. The light of the street lamp coming in through the window makes the lines of his face look sharp and prominent like battle scars. Maybe that’s what they are. Andrew tells him, lips curling around a cigarette, ”You’re getting fucking spoilt.”

”And whose fault is that?” is the response. Neil sounds like he always does — too real and like he knows something Andrew doesn’t. It’s infuriating. Andrew thinks about the memory of digging his fingers into the skin of Neil’s shoulders until he shuddered. Pushes the thought away.

”Yours,” he says and blows the cigarette smoke out, then turns to Neil. His eyes catch on Neil’s sharp smile and stay there.

The tilt of Neil’s mouth is like a scratch on a glass surface, growing sharper in a way that means it’s special. Andrew knows it’s a rare, brief occurrence. He’s seen, sealed and preserved every single one.

He wants to wipe the smile off Neil’s face. Pin it in place so it stays a little longer this time.

Neil doesn’t say _”That’s a lie”_. He doesn’t say _”Half of the keys I have used to be yours”_.

They both know.

  
———

  
Neil is terribly real. With his patchwork body, hurt etched into his hands and his chest and his face; with his frayed promises and hard-won truths and Exy obsession. Andrew is not used to the infectious feeling of existence Neil carries with himself everywhere he goes, handles it like it weighs nothing. It makes Andrew’s chest feel smaller than it really is. Fills it with something Andrew has yet to properly name.

It is a promise that was made once, Andrew guesses. Something about _yes_ and _no_ and staying. Andrew remembers it word for word. An answer of sorts. Maybe a future, at last.

It’s enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://ohandrews.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/thisbitcch1)


End file.
